Father Time is no match for dignity

10:15 PM,
Oct. 29, 2012

Written by

Michael
PULLEY

I knew only one grandparent, Alexander Pulley, born in 1877, dying in 1968.

He was the oldest person I knew, a man who lost his farm in the Great Depression, who struggled mostly at a subsistence level, who remarried after his wife's death, and who was known as humble, kindhearted and considerate. I vaguely recall that at Sunday dinners he would sit with suit, tie and vest at the head of our table, laughing loudly, open-mouthed.

But mostly I remember him in a nursing home after dementia set in. My father insisted I accompany him, where my grandfather sat pleasantly by his bed or on the front veranda, ...